Mobile Devices and Wikis for global collaboration
Focus: Collaboration - Conversation and data sharing
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IntroductionThe use of mobile devices in schools can be a great way to widen education for situated learning scenarios. This video shows how students can collaborate with others from all over the world by using mobile devices and apps and also software like Skype or Wikispaces.
Students foster their language and social skills in real-life based educational scenarios alongside students from a different cultural backgrounds. By using a wiki, both teams can create knowledge which is then shared collaboratively as a dynamic database. In this video school classes from India (Z.P. High School, Sakoli, India) and Germany (Rennbuckel Realschule) work together to construct multiple perspectives on views about issues of child labour. Objectives of this scenario:
Description of the learning scenarioThe use of mobile technology is a way of transforming learning into a more authentic and meaninful form. Students will take more responsibility for their own learning. This can help them to consider how their work is important and meaningful to others. In this example, students from India (Z.P. High School, Sakoli, India) and Germany (Rennbuckel Realschule) work together to create multiple perspectives on issues of child labour.
Students used their mobile devices to communicate between their different workgroups and to create a Wiki on the chosen topic. They also used mobile devices to gather data and record interviews with children, and to find out why children need to work and what they use their salary for. Impact of the learning scenario on studentsAs the video shows, students were motivated because their learning was useful, and meaningful, to others. The learning scenario helped them to get a sound understanding about a issue that is only theoretical in one country (Germany) is very real in another (India) and of the real impact of this issue (child labour).
Students were aware of the fact that a look into history can only be one way of finding out ideas and that solutions of the past can never be a single solution in the present age. This is because economic perspectives and relations may have either changed or that contemporary problems differ from today. |
This scenario featured the use of iPads by students. Each student has access to a personal devices during the activity.
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